This
story was updated at 2:42 p.m. EST.
It was
moving day at the International Space Station Monday as astronauts aboard
NASA's shuttle Endeavour delivered a portable room packed with new home
additions for the orbiting laboratory.
Using the
space station's robotic arm, astronauts plucked the Italian-built
cargo module from Endeavour's payload bay and attached it to an Earth-facing
port on the orbiting lab's Harmony connecting node so its vital contents of
space bedroom, bathroom and kitchen hardware can be moved in later this week.
Endeavour docked
at the space station on Sunday to deliver its cargo and a new crewmember to
the outpost's Expedition 18 crew during a planned 15-day mission that includes
four spacewalks.
"It's a big
party up here with 10 people, it's amazing," said newly-minted Endeavour
astronaut Greg Chamitoff after the docking. Chamitoff has lived aboard the station
since June and joined Endeavour's crew late Sunday after his replacement,
fellow NASA
astronaut Sandra Magnus, arrived aboard the shuttle.
The cargo
pod move began at about 11:45 a.m. EST (1645 GMT), when astronauts used the
station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to latch onto Leonardo, a Multi-Purpose
Logistics Module (MPLM) the size of a small, 25-passenger school bus. With a
delicate touch, Endeavour mission specialist Don Pettit and his crewmates
attached the module in place and began work to pressurize it so interior
hatches can be opened.
"Nice
hands, Dr. Pettit," Mission Control radioed up after the successful move.
The hefty
cargo module is laden with 16 supply racks, each as big as a refrigerator, and
12 extra bags of stuff added just to fill in its conical end cone.
"This is
the first full logistics module that we've flown," said Mike Sarafin,
Endeavour's lead shuttle flight director, in a televised briefing late Sunday.
"And we're expecting just getting the logistics module installed tomorrow will
take up most of the day."
While the
12-ton Leonardo module is filled with more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kg) of
cargo, the focus of Endeavour's crew is on delivering new gear so the station
can jump to larger, six-person crews next year. The outpost needs to double its
current three-astronaut population to handle the orbital maintenance and
scientific research required for the growing laboratory, mission managers have
said.
Chief among
the new life support gear to be delivered are a spare $19 million bathroom,
second kitchen, two new bedrooms, an exercise machine that offers more than 29
different workouts and a $250
million recycling system that filters urine, sweat and other wastewater
through a seven-step process to turn it back into drinkable water. A repurposed
space cooler will serve as a space station fridge to give expedition astronauts
constant access to cool drinks for the first time in eight years aboard the
orbiting lab.
"This
module is sort of like a transportainer that you see being loaded on ships,"
Pettit said in a preflight NASA interview. "We're taking a new toilet. We're
taking regenerative life support. We're taking a new galley. We're taking
sleeping quarters, finished carpentry-type work to outfit a space station
that's still under construction."
Pettit is
Endeavour's loadmaster, the astronaut in charge of making sure every bit of
cargo makes the move from the Leonardo module into the station, and that every
bit of the station's trash or unneeded equipment makes the return trip back to
Earth.
"It's kind
of like doing a Rubik's Cube," Pettit told SPACE.com of the transfer chore
before launch. "It is packed, really packed."
Altogether,
Endeavour astronauts have about 105 hours of cargo transfer work to perform
during their flight, but only 98 hours actually set aside to do it. Mission
managers are confident, however, that Endeavour's supplies can support at least
one extra day to give shuttle astronauts more time to haul cargo.
"From a
consumables standpoint, we have more than adequate margin to support an extra
day right now," Sarafin said Sunday. But the decision on when to officially
extend the spaceflight one extra day will be made later in the mission, he
added.
Mission
managers were prepared to delay today's move of the Leonardo cargo module if an
extra inspection of the heat shielding along Endeavour's starboard wing was
required, since parts of the wing would be out of reach once the module was in
place. But image analysts found no reason to call for the extra inspection,
setting the stage for today's orbital move.
Elsewhere
aboard the space station, astronauts are preparing for the first of four
spacewalks scheduled during Endeavour's docked mission. That spacewalk is set
for Tuesday and will feature the retrieval of an empty nitrogen tank, the installation of a spare part for the station's
cooling system and the first attempt to clean a balky
solar array gear on the outpost's starboard side.
NASA is
providing live coverage of Endeavour's STS-126 mission on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's
mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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